Trump’s Rome Remarks a Maelstrom of Falsehoods
President Donald J. Trump flew to Georgia last week to tout his administration’s alleged economic success and stump for his anointed political candidates. While his long rambling speech was met by roaring applause, it was peppered with statements that were misleading and even patently false. Was Trump intentionally deceiving the crowd or is he disconnected from the realities on the ground? I will let my readers decide, but first, consider some of his quotes from Rome.
“I had to listen to the fake news talk about affordability. You notice, what word have you not heard over the last two weeks? Affordability. Because I won. I won affordability,” Trump boasted. I don’t know how you “win affordability” exactly, but this feels like Trump’s George W. Bush moment. In 2003, the former president gave a speech on the Iraq invasion with a “mission accomplished” banner behind him, which was a fateful decision. The Iraq war proved far from accomplished—much like affordability today, but that didn’t stop Trump.
“Airfares, hotels, car payments, rent, sports, events, groceries—everything’s down!” he continued. You might be wondering if everything is in fact down. Spoiler alert: It’s not. Trump has some successes he can point out. But if he keeps downplaying affordability issues, like the Biden administration did, then he may do to the Republican Party what Biden did to Democrats—as they suffered serious defeats a couple years ago.
While some commodities and services have declined in price—and price fluctuations happen with regularity thanks to many variables—goods and services overall remain more costly than when Biden was president. That is in part due to economic realities such as the lingering effects of the pandemic supply chain disruptions. Inflation continues, and even if it does so at a slower pace than under the Biden presidency, those high prices remain doggedly in place.
Speaking of inflation, Trump explained, “We inherited a mess. We inherited the worst inflation in history.” That’s partially correct. Inflation under Biden advanced at a breakneck pace, and while it was particularly painful, it was far from the worst in history. Presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan all presided over years with higher annual inflation rates.
This falsehood aside, Trump said, “We’ve turned it around and we’ve made it great”—referring to inflation. I don’t know how you make inflation seem “great” to a country suffering from persistent high prices, but to this administration’s credit, the inflation rate isn’t as bad as those under Biden. Even so, it still remains higher than the Federal Reserve target of 2%.
Trump also bristled at how the U.S. Supreme Court was mulling the constitutionality of his unilaterally imposed tariffs, even though that is the high court’s role. He complained, “To think I have to be in the United States Supreme Court for many, many months waiting for its decision on tariffs. Without tariffs, this country would be in such trouble right now.”
The Tax Foundation has some great research on this topic. The organization noted, “Under the tariffs imposed and scheduled as of February 6, 2026, the weighted average applied tariff rate on all imports rises to 13.5 percent, and the average effective tariff rate, reflecting behavioral responses, rises to 9.9 percent—the highest average rate since 1946.”
How does that impact everyday Americans? “The Trump tariffs amount to an average tax increase per US household of $1,000 in 2025 and $1,300 in 2026,” per the foundation. Imagine how much better our economic outlook would be without this financial burden. So much for winning affordability I guess. Thankfully, the Supreme Court has since ruled that Trump far overstepped his authority on imposing tariffs.
Trump also turned his attention to a favorite topic: the 2020 election, as if he could beat that dead horse any more, and focused on Fulton County’s elections office. “Why don’t they want them to see the [2020] ballots after all these years?” he asked. “You know why they don’t want? Because they cheated. That’s why.”
The 2020 presidential election results have been argued in numerous court cases and been the subject of myriad audits and studies, and nobody—no matter how hard they’ve labored—has proven that the election was stolen. Why Trump simply won’t accept this is beyond me, especially considering his return to the White House, and he should remember that his stolen election claims helped Democrats flip Georgia’s two Senate seats in 2020.
Trump came to Georgia to place his thumb on the scale in support of certain candidates, and time will reveal how much he helped them. Yet Trump’s screed in Rome ought to worry Republicans who are facing a round of contentious campaigns. Democrats, on the other hand, should probably revel in Trump’s false statements about 2020 and affordability because he does so to the detriment of Republicans.